Has heard of mules of canary and other finches breeding occasionally, but it is rare, and there is hardly one authenticated case of two such mules breeding together.

+

Sixteen of the household at Down are sick with influenza.

Transcription

Down Bromley Kent Feb. 24th Dear Innes.

Many thanks for your friendly note. You seem all very
prosperous, & we are very glad to hear of it.— I have heard of the
mule from the canary & other finches occasionally breeding; but it is very rare
(except with the siskin where the case is not so rare) & there is
hardly one quite well authenticated case of two such mules breeding together. I will not forget your offer if I should wish for any
observations or enquiries made in the north.

Life rolls on, as you know, very uniformly in Down, & we have no news. Yes, we
have, the Butcher has jilted his old love, & is going to be married to a new
one!

We went a few days ago to lunch with the John Lubbocks & they evidently seem
thoroughily to enjoy their new home & freedom. They
gave us a good account of poor Montague.

We have had the Influenza here very badly— 16 were sick in this
house, & at one time six in bed. Etty keeps capital;
but now we have Horace failing badly with intermittent weak pulse, like four of
our other children previously. It is a curious form
of inheritance from my poor constitution, though I never failed in exactly that
way.— I am glad to hear that Mrs. Innes (to whom
pray give our kind remembrances) has been out to dinner; she
beats me, for I have not ventured on such a bold step for an age.

In Variation 2: 154, CD wrote of finches kept in confinement that `more
than a dozen species could be named which have yielded hybrids with the canary; but
hardly any of these, with the exception of the siskin … have
reproduced their own kind.'

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f3 3457.f3

The name of the butcher's shop in Down was Osborne & Whitehead
(Post
Office directory of the six home counties 1862); the
reference is to Alfred James Osborne (Census returns 1861 (Public Record Office,
RG9/462: 71)).

+

f4 3457.f4

CD refers to a lunch party held by the Lubbocks on 15 February 1862 (see
letter from John Lubbock, 13 February 1862). In 1861, John
and Ellen Frances Lubbock moved from the Lubbock family home, High Elms, near Down, to
Chislehurst, several miles north of Down (Hutchinson 1914, 1: 52).

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f5 3457.f5

John Lubbock's younger brother, Montagu, had been seriously injured in a carriage
accident in 1861 (Hutchinson 1914, 1: 178). See also Correspondence
vol. 9.